Bitcoin News

Mainstream Adoption Boom: 1800 Post Offices in Austria Avail Bitcoin

​Various sources including derStandard.at have revealed that 1,800 post offices in Austria availed bitcoin in cooperation with bitcoin service provider Bitpanda.

Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, also noted that through Bitpanda, anyone will be able to purchase bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash at thousands of post office branches.

According to the Bitpanda team, the company aimed to introduce methods that customers can use to purchase cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin with ease, cash, low fees and safely. The process is fairly simple and transparent: customers can purchase cryptocurrency vouchers and use that to credit bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash to their respective wallets.

Thousands of post offices across the country have all integrated the service of Bitpanda, enabling consumers to purchase cryptocurrencies without additional verification and manual approval. To date, Bitpanda’s collaborative service with the Austrian post office remains as one of the few methods which consumers can use to purchase cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin anonymously, without verification.

​At the moment, Europe remains a relatively small bitcoin exchange market in comparison to other major markets such as the US, Japan and China. However, recently, Europe surpassed a major market in South Korea to become the fourth largest bitcoin exchange market globally.

Exchanges and trading platforms that focused on providing services to the European market including Kraken took over other prominent exchanges such as Bitstamp, as Europe secured over 9 percent of the global bitcoin exchange market share.

Some of the major factors that contributed to the rise of the European exchange market have been the integration of bitcoin by leading merchants and service provider.

Earlier this week, Liefrando, Germany’s largest food delivey platform integrated bitcoin as a payment method for merchants and users. More to that, Bitpanda’s collaboration with the Austrian post offices drastically increased liquidity for casual buyers who have been looking for alternative methods to purchase cryptocurrencies with ease, anonymously.

Other methods include bitcoin ATMs, which Europe lacks. Other regions such as South Korea have also moved on from bitcoin ATMs due to their expensive operating and manufacturing costs. Instead, bitcoin applications and service providers have started to partner with banks and ATM service providers in order to enable bitcoin purchases at existing ATMs.

In fact, in South Korea, bitcoin wallet operator Coinplug partnered with Hyosong to allow consumers to cash out bitcoin at tens of thousands of convenience store ATMs, increasing liquidity for casual consumers.

If Europe continues to improve liquidity for casual bitcoin users with the introduction of services such as the Bitpanda-Austrian post office voucher, mainstream adoption will rise at a rapid rate.

Author : Joseph Young

Joseph Young is a finance and tech journalist based in Hong Kong. He has worked with leading media and news agencies in the technology and finance industries, offering exclusive content, interviews, insights and analysis of cryptocurrencies, innovative and futuristic technologies.